If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You will have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

If I missed something, feel free to tell me that this isn't sufficiently unique (or deficient in some other way, of course). I realize that (in the Geekademia interview, for example) Rich has implied that there are three more compilation books before the end of the story. But I believe this is the first time I've seen a comment from The Giant on how many more years the comic will run.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

I'm not sure this comes up a lot in discussion, really. But I'll add it.

Originally Posted by Flame of Anor

We should cite this in the first post. The Giant talks about how the Order works and about Xykon's origins.

Funny. But no.

Originally Posted by Dr. Gamera

If I missed something, feel free to tell me that this isn't sufficiently unique (or deficient in some other way, of course). I realize that (in the Geekademia interview, for example) Rich has implied that there are three more compilation books before the end of the story. But I believe this is the first time I've seen a comment from The Giant on how many more years the comic will run.

I'm not sure that is necessarily valuable info, as it is so tentative. "3-4 years" seems like a guess more than a scheduled out plan. Maybe I'm wrong on this though.

"And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in even if they do understand." - St. Augustine

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

On what the comic is about, and some comments on rules accuracy.

Spoiler

Show

J - OK I think David wants to ask you a couple of questions, I've been crowding the mic so I'll let him ask a couple of things
D - So, you mentioned nobody asks you what your comic is about... what is your comic about?
R - My comic is a comedy adventure fantasy comic, it's about a group of adventurers, heroes or warriors, whatever you want to call them, called the Order of the Stick, as they go about their adventures with minimal competence or knowledge of what they are doing, and eventually sort of stumble into a plan by an undead sorcerer to conquer the world, essentially, and they're out to stop him and conquer their personal problems at the same time. Hopefully not in that order, so they get their personal problems taken care of before the final battle. And it's a comedy. Specially in the early parts it has a lot of roleplaying games... the whole thing is sort of within the framework of Dungeons and Dragons, the early strips made many explicit references to this, specially for jokes, the later strips just use it as the framework of the world, in terms of deciding what kinds of spells can a sorcerer cast, what kinds of spells can a cleric cast, etc. etc., I don't really worry about "oh, this character doesn't have enough hit bonus to... you know, let me roll the dice", if the story needs him to hit, he hits, if the story needs him to miss, he misses. There's a certain segment of my fans who think that's grossly unfair. Not that they necessarily believe I should roll the dice, but they believe that the percentages should be accurately represented, so that if somebody swings their sword at someone 20 times, they should hit a number of times equal to their, you know, relative attack bonus blah blah blah. That doesn't happen, that's not something I worry about. But yeah, it's essentially a fantasy adventure quest story, of a warrior out to avenge his father against a sorcerer, and the sorcerer happens to be trying to conquer the world at the same time. That's a nutshell. And it's stick figures, that needs to be said. If you're picturing that in the most elaborate fantasy artwork, that's not what we're talking about. They're basically really simplistic colorful block characters going about this.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

I'm not sure that is necessarily valuable info, as it is so tentative. "3-4 years" seems like a guess more than a scheduled out plan. Maybe I'm wrong on this though.

I wouldn't include that one personally because he's made similar comments over the years. Not the exact same timeframe, mind. But, still.

I always treat those "end date" comments as something of a moving target. Especially as he himself notes that "the tale expands in the telling" often times.

I think simply noting that the comic has an end date and won't continue forever is sufficent.

ETA: Although also noting that he might revist the World of OotS after the main comic is over might be of interest (that was in the podcast, but I don't know if it's been transcribed or not yet). But, then again, "might" really doesn't say all that much, I suppose.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

On The Giant roleplaying, and how writing OotS replaced DMing in his life.

Spoiler

Show

J - Order of the Stick is of course a huge gaming comic so I was wondering if you still had time to do any roleplaying these days?
R - No, no, I haven't in a while. The last roleplaying I did was when I was working on... when I was gonna do Snips, Snails an Dragon Tales, the limited book with the Dragon Magazine strips, I did some 4th Edition roleplaying to be sure I knew sort of what I was talking about, which I probably didn't but I can pretend better, and that was over a year ago now. It just doesn't work, you know, it hasn't really worked out that way, that I had as much time for that as I used to, sort of fallen by the wayside, but not in a way that I'll never go back to it, just in a time way, I think you get busy at a certain point in your life, with your work and your family and your such and such, and whether or not you have time for it is sort of random, sort of up in the air. I mean, I still get a lot of that sort of fix from thinking about it, talking about it and such like that. But in a certain point, I was always the DM when I played, and at a certain point it just feels like I'm taking that much time to craft a complex story, maybe I should just write it down and someone would pay me for it. I guess that's possibly maybe a little bit of it, because I'm now sort of essentially a professional fantasy writer, that I can't really bring myself to put the same amount of effort I did when I was in college and such and it was the focus of my creative attention.

On the OotS Roleplaying setting, and why it doesn't exist

Spoiler

Show

J - And along those lines, I realize that doing it at this point would probably be a mountain of effort and give too much away, but I've seen people on the forums asking if some day there would actually be an Order of the Stick world created for any sort of gaming system. Do you think you would do that if you had the time and opportunity?

R - Let me tell you, I started working on that a few years ago, and what happened is, I got about 20 or 30 pages in, and WotC announced 4th Edition. And I didn't know what was gonna happen with it, I didn't know whether I was gonna want to make it for that, I didn't know if making it on 3rd Edition would still be possible with the game license, would they find a way to revoke that, it was all up in the air, everything was sort of chaos and I had no idea what was gonna happen, so I put it aside, and then have never gone back to it since, really. It wasn't compatible at all with 4th Edition, so therefore that wasn't going to work, and I don't know, I didn't know whether I would ever really have the direct audience that I thought it should so I think I just sort of let it lie fallow after that.

I cannibalized parts of it, the document I started working on, I think the last compilation I put out, Don't Split the Party had some black and white cartoons that were from that project,and I know the map that I did in the back of one of them for Azure City was actually of the Azure City country description, so you know, pieces of it have been seen here and there ever since. But another problem was that I'd done a write up for Elan's Dashing Swordsman class,and since then I had at least three things I've put into the comic, you know, here's this joke about this class that has this ridiculous cliched hero abilities, and if I put out that class, I can't really do that any more. Can I then say "Oh, it has this ability too"? 'cause I've already taken people's money to say "This is the class that it is!". So I think it's easier to leave things vague and up in the air and just use them when I want to as humour rather than as concrete game rules.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

Thanks, Xapi. What I'm going to do is wait until you transcribe the entire interview, and then put the text in its own section in the Index, with subsections marked like 1A, 1B, 2A... etc. Then I will place comments in the actual index like "On the OOTS Roleplaying Setting: Why It Doesn't Exist: See Interview Section 3C." Hopefully that will be the best way to categorize / organize it.

"And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in even if they do understand." - St. Augustine

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

On the double poster:

Spoiler

Show

J - You can't see this, but behind us in the studio is the big double poster of all the characters.
R - Hah! That took forever.
J - I can tell.
R - What's funny is I had worked on it, and then had to put it aside, and when I got back to it I had introduced like 4 new characters that had to go on, I had to find room for Tarquin and Malack and Kil-Kil over in the corner of the villains poster, and I put Captain Malack's helmet on... Not Malack, Tarquin's helmet on. He was still new enough that I thought people who weren't caught up to the story, so I didn't want them to see who he was before... you know some people only read the books... yeah, so, did that at the last minute.

On fanart and fanfiction (yes, THAT sort of fanfiction).

Spoiler

Show

D - It's funny, I just saw some fanart for Order of the Stick, but it was drawn like Frank Frazetta.
R - (Laughs) Yes.
D - Super detailed, very...
R - Yeah, what I always find interesting is the choices they make for the parts of the characters that are really not be able to tell what's going on because they're sticks. I've seen fanart that was really realistic of Roy fighting except for some reason he had no pants, like he had one armor piece over his torso but his legs were bare. That's why I think at one point I had Haley make a crack about how she's wearing long pants but you can't tell because she's a stick figure. Because I wanted to put a stop of that, I wanted no more pantless Roy. That's a whole other direction that I'm sure is out there on the Internet, but I don't need to see it.
D - Well, that kills my next question...
R - (Laughs)
D - Once again, on the forum for a while, there was a whole section of people...
R - Oh, yeah. We had to slay that once people started crossing some lines. Once they crossed the Elan - Nale incest line, we had to put a stop to that
D - As well you should.
R - Yeah exactly
D - There are some weird people there.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

I think the "Frank Facetti" there should be "Frank Frazetta."

"And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in even if they do understand." - St. Augustine

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

Originally Posted by Xapi

On The Giant roleplaying, and how writing OotS replaced DMing in his life.

Spoiler

Show

J - Order of the Stick is of course a huge gaming comic so I was wondering if you still had time to do any roleplaying these days?
R - No, no, I haven't in a while. The last roleplaying I did was when I was working on... when I was gonna do Snips, Snails an Dragon Tales, the limited book with the Dragon Magazine strips, I did some 4th Edition roleplaying to be sure I knew sort of what I was talking about, wich I probably didn't but I can pretend better, and that was over a year ago now. It just doesn't work, you know, it hasn't really worked out that way, that I had as much time for that as I used to, sort of fallen by the wayside, but not in a way that I'll never go back to it, just in a time way, I think you get busy at a certain point in your life, with your work and your family and your such and such, and weather or not you have time for it is sort of random, sort of up in the air. I mean, I still get a lot of that sort of fix from thinking about it, talking about it and such like that. But in a certain point, I was always the DM when I played, and at a certain point it just feels like I'm taking that much time to craft a complex story, maybe I should just write it down and someone would pay me for it. I guess that's possibly maybe a little bit of it, because I'm now sort of esencially a professional fantasy writer, that I can't really bring myself to put the same amount of effort I did when I was in college and such and it was the focus of my creative attention.

On the OotS Roleplaying setting, and why it doesn't exist

Spoiler

Show

J - And along those lines, I realize that doing it at this point would probably be a mountain of effort and give too much away, but I've seen people on the forums asking if some day there would actually be an Order of the Stick world created for any sort of gaming system. Do you think you would do that if you had the time and opportunity?

R - Let me tell you, I started working on that a few years ago, and what happened is, I got about 20 or 30 pages in, and WotC announced 4th Edition. And I didn't know what was gonna happen with it, I didn't know weather I was gonna want to make it for that, I didn't know if making it on 3rd Edition would still be possible with the game license, would they find a way to revoke that, it was all up in the air, everything was sort of chaos and I had no idea what was gonna happen, so I put it aside, and then have never gone back to it since, really. It wasn't compatible at all with 4th Edition, so therefore that wasn't going to work, and I don't know, I didn't know weather I would ever really have the direct audience that I thought it should so I think I just sort of let it life out after that.

I cannibalized parts of it, the document I started working on, I think the last compilation I put out, Don't Split the Party had some black and white cartoons that were from that project,and I know the map that I did in the back of one of them for Azure City was actually of the Azure City country description, so you know, pieces of it have been seen here and there ever since. But another problem was that I'd done a write up for Elan's Dashing Swordsman class,and since then I had at least three things I've put into the comic, you know, here's this joke about this class that has this ridiculous cliched hero abilities, and if I put out that class, I can't really do that anymore. Can I then say "Oh, it has this ability too"? 'cause I've already taken people's money to say "This is the class that it is!". So I think it's easier to leave things vague and up in the air and just use them when I want to as humour rather than as concrete game rules.

I really hate nitpicking, but whether is a bit different from the weather whether the difference is heard or read.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

Originally Posted by CloakedDancer

I really hate nitpicking, but whether is a bit different from the weather whether the difference is heard or read.

Thanks. I don't mind corrections, I'm not a native english speaker, so I'm likely to just not understand 0.5% of the words (as happened with luddite) and make a mistake on another 0.5%. Still, 99% efficiency is pretty good :P

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

Originally Posted by Xapi

Thanks. I don't mind corrections, I'm not a native english speaker, so I'm likely to just not understand 0.5% of the words (as happened with luddite) and make a mistake on another 0.5%. Still, 99% efficiency is pretty good :P

I look forward to the day when I'm half as fluent in a language other than English as you are in English.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

Xapi, I think your transcription is awesome. Having listened to the interview myself, I think the missing word in the section on "what the comic is about" is "quest". And yay for transcription of a non-native language!

Having said that, is there any way I could edit your transcript before Phantasm puts it up on the front page of the thread? I know it's only 0.5% (I think your estimate is fairly accurate!) but the occasional misspellings do trip people up sometimes. Maybe if I just copy your text, fix it up a tiny bit and PM it to Phantasm to put in? I'm not suggesting you send it all to me before you post it here, it would just slow down your good work, but I'd like a chance to polish it a bit :)

Sorry, I'm such a stickler for accuracy, I get itchy editing fingers...

Edit: Flame of Anor, there used to be a section of the website for fanart. Now it's been incorporated into the forums, in the Arts and Crafts section. You may want to start here

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

Originally Posted by theangelJean

Xapi, I think your transcription is awesome. Having listened to the interview myself, I think the missing word in the section on "what the comic is about" is "quest". And yay for transcription of a non-native language!

Having said that, is there any way I could edit your transcript before Phantasm puts it up on the front page of the thread? I know it's only 0.5% (I think your estimate is fairly accurate!) but the occasional misspellings do trip people up sometimes. Maybe if I just copy your text, fix it up a tiny bit and PM it to Phantasm to put in? I'm not suggesting you send it all to me before you post it here, it would just slow down your good work, but I'd like a chance to polish it a bit :)

Sorry, I'm such a stickler for accuracy, I get itchy editing fingers...

Edit: Flame of Anor, there used to be a section of the website for fanart. Now it's been incorporated into the forums, in the Arts and Crafts section. You may want to start here

Just point out the mistakes and I'll go back and edit them, as I have done with the ones that have been pointed out already.

Normally, I have enough time to check the forums and do short posts 5 or 6 times a day, while I'd have enough time to transcribe one or two questions at most once a day. So going back to edit the bits and pieces that I got wrong will not slow me down at all.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

Originally Posted by theangelJean

Xapi, I think your transcription is awesome. Having listened to the interview myself, I think the missing word in the section on "what the comic is about" is "quest". And yay for transcription of a non-native language!

Having said that, is there any way I could edit your transcript before Phantasm puts it up on the front page of the thread? I know it's only 0.5% (I think your estimate is fairly accurate!) but the occasional misspellings do trip people up sometimes. Maybe if I just copy your text, fix it up a tiny bit and PM it to Phantasm to put in? I'm not suggesting you send it all to me before you post it here, it would just slow down your good work, but I'd like a chance to polish it a bit :)

Sorry, I'm such a stickler for accuracy, I get itchy editing fingers...

Edit: Flame of Anor, there used to be a section of the website for fanart. Now it's been incorporated into the forums, in the Arts and Crafts section. You may want to start here

Also, could it be that the missing word is actually the phrase "They're out to" (stop him) instead of "their quest to" (stop him)? I reheard it trying to find the "quest" and for some reason heard something I hadn't heard before. I blame the earplugs I use at work.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

Originally Posted by Xapi

Thanks. I don't mind corrections, I'm not a native english speaker, so I'm likely to just not understand 0.5% of the words (as happened with luddite) and make a mistake on another 0.5%. Still, 99% efficiency is pretty good :P

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

This re-raises a question I asked myself while transcribing that part.

Is it pantless or pantsless?

Pantsless.

Pantless would mean Roy not panting like a dog. The article of clothing is called "pants," not "pant."

Spoiler

Show

"You are what you do. Choose again, and change." --Miles Vorkosigan

"The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in the future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present--they are real." --Aral Vorkosigan

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

Originally Posted by Kish

Pantsless.

Pantless would mean Roy not panting like a dog. The article of clothing is called "pants," not "pant."

Unfortunately, English does not conform to such simple rules.

Both words appear to be missing from most dictionaries, but I did find "pantless", meaning "without pants", in The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, listed as in use since the late 1800s. There was no entry for "pantsless".

From a descriptivist point of view, the words seem to be used with roughly similar frequencies.

Re: The Index of the Giant's Comments

Originally Posted by Xapi

Well, I know the word is pants, but pantsless just sounds... off.

I just did some quick looking of my own, and what I found would confirm Dr. Gamera's findings. Almost no dictionaries recognize either word. However I can say that most internet uses of the word involve the "pantless" variation, although pantsless would seem more technically correct. However many English words do not follow technicalities so I say do as you will.